CFO Sentiment Report | Edition 21
Holding firm in a crisis
Australian CFOs are recalibrating confidence, risk and resilience as economic uncertainty intensifies. Deloitte’s latest CFO Sentiment Report reveals how finance leaders are responding — prioritising discipline today while investing selectively for tomorrow.
While Australian CFOs are entering FY27 with greater caution, they’re certainly not retreating. Confidence in individual organisations has softened, however it remains resilient relative to the broader economic outlook. Record level low confidence in the Australian economy, elevated uncertainty and constrained risk appetite are reshaping decision making and sharpening CFOs’ focus on execution, liquidity and value creation. At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is now near universal. As organisations shift from experimentation to execution, the challenge for CFOs is translating AI investment into enterprise wide impact.
Key takeaways
- Business confidence softens, not collapses: Net optimism in own business prospects has moderated to 50%. Rather than becoming more pessimistic, CFOs are shifting toward a neutral stance.
- Economic confidence hits a new low: Sentiment towards the Australian economy has fallen to –36%, reflecting heightened concern around inflation and geopolitical instability.
- Risk appetite remains constrained: Net uncertainty has spiked to 93%, close to historic highs, with only 26% of CFOs believing now is a good time to take on risk.
- AI is everywhere but value is not: Around 90% of organisations are using AI in some form, but only 16% report extensive use, illustrating the challenges of scaling.
These findings point to a CFO agenda defined by discipline, selectivity and execution. As uncertainty persists, CFOs are balancing near term resilience with longer term capability building, positioning their organisations for future growth.
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CFO confidence in their own organisations has moderated to 50%, down 13percentage points, signalling caution rather than contraction. In contrast, confidence in the broader economy has fallen sharply to a record low of -36%,driven by persistent inflation and global instability, reinforcing a more defensive outlook.
Uncertainty has surged back into the CFO agenda, nearing a historic high of 93%. CFOs are tightening risk settings, prioritising balance sheet resilience, liquidity and optionality over expansionary moves.
With the Middle East conflict driving a more uncertain look, CFOs are responding by taking a disciplined approach. The top responses to uncertainty are cost controls (56%), monitoring developments (40%) and cash management (34%).
Around 9 in 10 finance functions now use AI, in line with organisation-wide adoption for the first time. However, it’s overwhelmingly being used to take cost and friction out of existing processes rather than to generate new insight. The leading use cases identified by CFOs are automated invoice processing (32%), finance planning and analysis automation (30%) and automated contract analysis (24%).
CFO Sentiment Ed. 21 H1 2026 highlights a cautious shift among Australia’s finance leaders. While confidence in their own business prospects has moderated, broader optimism has softened and uncertainty has risen sharply amid economic and geopolitical pressures. CFOs are recalibrating risk, prioritising discipline and resilience while continuing to invest selectively in longer term capability, including AI.
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